'Dog genius' helping study to find talented pups

A border collie labelled a "dog genius" because he can recognise and retrieve toys from hundreds of commands is helping a study that could help train talented puppies in the future.

Harvey, who is seven and lives in Reading, knows names for about 220 toys and has been honing his skill since he was a puppy.

University of Portsmouth research found 10 other dogs in the world with similar capacity to learn hundreds of words and associate objects with them.

"I have spoken to people who proactively try to train their dogs and I thought: 'this is really hard. It's not something that you can train any dog [to do],'" Dr Juliane Kaminski, from the university, said.

"That made me think: 'is there something about these dogs that is different, something that is special, something that is unique about them in terms of their cognition, how they understand or process information?'"

Harvey and his owner Irene are helping research based in Hampshire and in Germany

Dr Kaminski's research, completed with the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena in Germany, found certain cognitive traits, including curiosity, are critical to the ability of "label-learning dogs" like Harvey.

His owner Irene Hewlett gives him commands in her native Dutch and English and said she was often "wading" through his toys at their home.

"We play this game all day so it's kind of his job. Border collies are working dogs so they need a job to keep their minds occupied to make sure they don't do naughty things. He plays this all day," she said.

Harvey has about 220 of the toys that he can identify by a vocal command

In addition to being good fun for Harvey, Dr Kaminski said similar games could be used to identify dogs that were especially adept at helping people.

"If we could identify these dogs, we could then work with charities to train dogs to assist people in their homes who would find it very beneficial if they had dogs that knew items by name and can support their owner in the household by fetching things," she added.

"For charities to train any dogs, it's quite hard. But if they have these pre-tests as a way to exclude puppies or a way to find the right puppy then that would make it easier for them."